by Megan Starks
“Look at me,” she repeated, redoubling the strength of her command, pouring magic into her voice as she spoke. “You’re not going to kill me.” She rolled her head to the side, fixing her gaze on Rhogan, and her dragon’s stormy eyes followed hers. “You’re going to help me kill him.”
“Shade.” Rhogan’s voice was a furious growl as his skin began to darken and four winding horns corkscrewed from his temples to his ears. “Bring me her head, now.”
“Resist him.” Gisele poured so much force into the words that they boiled on her tongue. “Flee and free yourself. Or stay and save me.”
Even behind the ghoulish features of her brother’s shape-shifting face, she could see his confusion. He hesitated, head cocked to the side. His black eyes gleamed, contemplating. She’d given Shade a choice.
Split-second fast, Shade made his decision. He lunged for her brother, wings and claws rending through the air. With a shout, Rhogan hulked, red muscles popping the seams of his gray suit. He loomed and laughed, the sound cracking, a sonorous boom. More horns corkscrewed from his head, forming a perfect halo, a sixteen-point crown. But when Shade catapulted into him, both demons went down.
Gisele stood, stretching her muscles to ease their stiffness. She’d always been strong, inhumanly so for her scrawny size, but now she could feel the heaviness of her added muscle mass. She was no taller than she had been, aside from the added length and girth of her horns. But now she felt simultaneously lean, mean, and curvy, her jeans biting into her enhanced hips and thighs. Her shirt puckered across her fuller breasts.
Was this what she’d always been meant to be? A demon. A terror. Had her true self been lurking this whole time under the veneer of her own humanity? Or had she simply discovered another, different side of herself? Fierce as her body now looked, she didn’t feel evil, just—powerful.
Black-clawed toenails punctured the toes of her boots—lovely—so she kicked them off and stepped barefoot into the fray. She hefted her sword, the silver glittering a litany of demands: Now. Steady, Angel. Now, now. Slash for its head and heart. Cleave the soul to kill the monsters that cannot die.
Sound advice. Feet skidding on the loose pebbles, she ducked and wove around the brawling pair, cutting and jabbing, doing her best to stab her brother without nicking Shade. Wings bone-jarringly knocked her askew. Claws scored her shoulder—Rhogan’s. When she hacked with the cleaver, black scales flashed where her brother had been a mere heartbeat before, halting her strike. No good. Even with the sword’s bloodthirst for battle guiding her, she couldn’t match their frenzied pace.
Sweat trickled down the back of her spine. “Shit!”
Despite Shade’s raw determination and skill, he was tiring. Hurting himself and struggling against Rhogan’s command; chasing her and nearly drowning; shifting, reverting, and shifting again—it had taken a clear toll on his strength.
“Take my sword,” Gisele called. He was the trained swordsman, not her. If anyone could skewer her brother, it’d be him.
A jolt of panic twisted across his face. “No!” he shouted, even as he reached for it with his right hand.
“Yes, take the sword,” Rhogan encouraged with a grin.
“S-stop me!”
Of course. A sword in his hand was a weapon against her. She hadn’t thought her command through, and now she’d endangered both of them.
“Don’t take it if you don’t want to,” she quickly amended. She’d have to be more careful with her wording.
Her dragon’s wings sagged with relief, and he flicked his gaze once more to his opponent. He surged forward faster than she could follow.
“Trip,” Rhogan demanded. “Now.”
Shade faltered, the tiniest misstep, and Rhogan punched his claws into the dragon’s gut. His other hand whipped for Shade’s throat as he lifted him into the beginning of a gruesome choke-slam.
Gisele screamed. But Shade’s wings beat hard, and he pulled up and off Rhogan’s claws, wresting violently from her brother’s hold on his neck. She’d expected her brother to be frustrated by Shade’s defiance, but instead he smiled, entertained, as a small crackling light arced to life in the palm of his blood-smeared hand.
As the light grew brighter, Shade’s eyes widened with fear, and he aborted his escape, diving for Rhogan to block Gisele from the path of the spell. “Gigi, run!”
She stood her ground. “No, Shade. No.”
The thick muscles between his shoulder blades bunched and trembled. He didn’t look back. “It’s his Right. Go! Or we’ll both die here.”
She had no choice. With a rushed apology, she rammed Joy through Shade’s left wing and up into her brother’s ribcage. Both demons howled, and she pressed the blade harder in, letting it drink deeply.
Ripping the slicked blade out, she shoved Shade to the side and swung hard for her brother’s neck. Homerun. She clipped his collarbone. Stuck. Rhogan jerked back, but before he could step away, she drew a surge of magic into her—heaved it from the lapping water in the pool behind her, from the round stones beneath her feet, from the sky and from everywhere. Like the moon’s pull on the ocean, the magic crashed around her, and without blinking, without conscious thought, she conjured an inferno from the veil.
It blazed black. It flickered and licked up the length of Joy’s argent blade.
Rhogan watched the flames. He held his breath. He said, “My sweetest sister, you are full of surprises. How is it you have an angel’s sword?”
Then she felt Shade’s hands steadying her, propelling her forward and lifting her up by her hips until the cleaver’s edge danced from bone and into muscle.
Together they lobbed Rhogan’s head off.
It rolled wetly. His red body teetered and fell, the image superimposing in her mind with the dragon Shade had killed in her memory-dream—the deadly one, Atlas.
Gisele fell limp with her brother’s death, the hellfire engulfing her sword extinguished. Shade caught her. He hauled her around, hugged her close.
“Gigi? Gigi, are you okay?” He was shaking, crushing her in his grip.
She laugh-sobbed and buried her face against his neck. Joy clattered to the ground. Forgotten, the cleaver diminished. It morphed and ebbed until once more it lay dull-edged, lesser and silent and still.
“I’m okay.” Gisele stroked her fingers over Shade’s shoulder blade, relieved to feel Rhogan’s brand fading. Wanting to see but too short to peer over his shoulder, she pressed her palm flat to his skin until she felt the scarred ridges disappear.
It had worked. Killing her brother had unbound Shade from him, mark and all. Rhogan’s past commands could no longer bind him. Which meant if Shade truly wanted to be free, all he had to do now…was to get rid of her next.
“I thought—I thought I was going to kill you.” Shade touched his lips to her ear and exhaled a sigh. His fingers dipped down to the small of her back, rubbing little circles over her spine.
His cut wing quivered, bleeding a river.
He pulled back to examine her, then kissed her, hard and fierce. His hands gripped her tighter, possessive. “I’m yours, Gigi. I’ve always been yours, from the night you first chose me.”
The emotion that welled within her was almost too much to handle. How many times would he make her feel as if the world had fallen out from under her feet? “Rhogan ordered you never to kill yourself. The best you could do was hurt yourself when you were attacking me. But Rhogan’s gone now.”
Shade grimaced. “You don’t—you don’t have to order me to do things. Not like he did. I know it might not seem like it, but I’ve always been loyal to you.” He spoke softly, careful. “I swear, I would die for you.”
His fingers dug against her hip.
He was telling the truth. She’d given him the chance to run, but he’d stayed to help her. Stupid, stubborn, loyal soul-bound. And now she could bind him in any way she wanted. Maybe she always could have. It was a terrible abuse of power. It was an awful thing to hold over him. But she didn’t r
egret ordering Shade never to lie to her, even now that she understood it was wrong.
She sucked in a sharp breath. Now was her chance to reassure him.
But instead, she found herself saying, “We have to go back for Beast.” How could they huddle here while her partner could be dead or dying? “He needs us.”
The valahan slid his gaze to one side. A shot of dread drew his dark brows together, then vanished, leaving his face a blank mask.
But she knew better. He was afraid, and her pulse leaped into her throat. Tap-tap-tapping. Thundering out a beat that was really a thought: the thought that Shade had killed her Beast.
29
It was the stench of so much bloody, raw meat that staggered Gisele first. She slipped on the pale pebbles, pitched with a startled sound, and would’ve gone down if Shade hadn’t grabbed her arm.
They’d crossed to the stone-laden deck where Beast’s still, crumpled form lay. The sight of him, the ruin of her friend, staggered her anew. Tears clogged her eyes.
They blurred the figures crowded over Beast’s body, but she still recognized her aunt, Felicitisia, standing among them.
“Get away!” she choked, surging forward.
Shade yanked her back against him. “Gisele…”
Don’t provoke them. He didn’t have to say it aloud; he was staring the thought hard enough at her, gray eyes glinting.
He was right to caution her. But in that moment, she didn’t want to hear it. Not from him. She wanted to hurt him. And her aunt, too. Wanted to burn the both of them for causing this.
“Back away from the beast!” she shouted, jerking forward, straining against Shade’s hold. “Touch him, and I swear to Satan, I’ll take your head, too.”
Felicitisia had the gall to simper. “There you are, darling,” she purred, and slid several steps back, acquiescing. The billowed hem of her red velvet gown was soaked in the minotaur’s blood, but when she moved, she still managed to make it sensuous, all swaying hips and heavy swishing fabric, and for that bit of callousness, Gisele hated her all the more.
Battered and bruised, Marcel stood near Beast’s side. He too, eased away from the spreading pool of gore, favoring his left leg. Aware Gisele was watching him, he offered her a weak smile and an even weaker wave after edging a step behind his mother’s back. Shade’s grip tightened on Gisele’s arm, and she realized she’d been baring her teeth.
The expression faded from her face, leaving her blank, bereft, and unsure of what to do.
“You’re not going to leave me alone,” she said, loathing it, but knowing it to be true. They’d followed her. Found her. Planned to use her to satisfy their whims. Was the only way to be free to kill again? To kill them all?
Three guards, all burly and hulking, flanked Marcel’s sides, but Gisele got the sense they were for her aunt’s protection more than his. One of them was Rumble, the minotaur bouncer they’d met at the club. “Who would hurt Half-horn?” she brayed, voice breaking, brown eyes roving his too-still form.
Gisele’s throat tightened up. Who, indeed. She couldn’t speak, so Shade did it for her.
“Rhogan,” he growled. And he held up the prince’s severed head.
Oh, but that was only half the story, wasn’t it? Was only one of the demons to blame.
As if aware of her thoughts, Shade tossed the trophy to her aunt’s feet—an admission of guilt and an offering.
“I must admit, I quite admire your ingenuity, darling. Even without your father’s Right of Blood, you were able to best him.” Felicitisia clapped, delighted. Peering down at the dismembered head, she let loose a throaty, pleased chuckle.
Nausea churned up Gisele’s throat. She went, falling, to Beast’s body, and Shade let her. The minotaur’s blood seeped into her jeans, sucked at her shins and knees. His body was still warm, his back coarse-furred under her palm.
Felicitisia guttered a breathy exhale. “You really are the strength of this bloodline. You’ve done exactly as I needed, albeit a bit ahead of schedule. And so I cannot remain cross with you. But you, soul-bound—” her eyes cut to Shade “—you have done nothing but recklessly endanger my plans.”
Gisele raked her gaze up. She didn’t want her aunt’s anger turned against Shade. She could be mad at him for failing Beast. But her aunt’s discontent was another, more deadly matter.
This close, she had a better view of the Devil who shared her blood. She’d thought the succubus was wearing a pair of velvet opera gloves, shades deeper than her scarlet dress. But as Felicitisia stooped and lifted Rhogan’s dismembered head by his loose, wispy hair, a satisfied smirk quirking her rouged lips, the crimson that coated her arms from fingertip to mid-shoulder glistened with a liquid sheen, and her brother’s blond strands tinged with streaks of red.
She didn’t know whose blood it was, but she could feel it was someone’s of incredible power.
Dangerous. Her aunt was a dangerous, demented woman. She needed to distract her ire from Shade, and fast.
“What plans?” Gisele goaded. “Like setting me up to kill your nephew?”
Her needling elicited a peal of laughter from the succubus’s tipped-back throat, and Shade crouched closer to Gisele. But he didn’t pull her from the minotaur’s ebbing warmth, not yet.
He thrummed, a force of violence waiting to erupt at her side.
Her aunt answered, “Absolutely, darling. Though I would not have risked you so soon. I desired first to polish you, to prepare you for this political game. You chose the path of recklessness. Because you could not leave the soul-bound to his fate.”
Again the anger had returned to her voice, threading Gisele’s pulse with a heated urgency.
“So you used the Mardoll to draw me to you so you could sic me on my family at a time of your choosing. Why? What’s the point to any of this?”
And why had she thought Gisele would be strong enough to survive it? Or had she hoped for all of them to die…
“She planned—” A strangled sound caught in Shade’s chest as his answer died before it could pass his lips. “I’m not—” His fingers grasped her wrist. Claws bit into the skin, pressed by his frustration.
Whatever he wanted to say, the contract was preventing it. Which meant her aunt didn’t want her to know.
“Tell me what you want to tell me,” Gisele quietly commanded.
He obliged with a relieved rasp. “Tisia abandoned our home realm a few years back. Fled Eden to spread her influence all over Thirst instead. So King Tantalus called on your brothers to correct her.”
Tantalus Lilithian? As in the tantalizing King of Desire, sovereign to the realm of Thirst—direct descendant of the fallen Seraph, Lilith? Holy shit. Gisele’s mouth dried to dust.
Her aunt had earned the ire of another Gate’s royal family.
There were six in all, a lineage per realm excepting Oblivion. In the past, they had battled, reigning destruction throughout the Gates and nearly bringing an end to the surface world above. But that truce had lasted for millennia.
Shade ground out each word as if, even with Gisele’s order, it was difficult to speak them. “Edelmark’s warring with Linger. Wanted a favor from the First Gate’s sovereign. Rhogan sent me in first. To investigate. Then to handle it with Vyx, if we could. That’s when Tisia approached me with the contract.”
“You shouldn’t have taken it.” Neither of them should have signed their contracts, binding themselves to such a dangerous game.
Shade turned her an odd look. His grip on her wrist eased. “Then I wouldn’t have found you.”
Marcel cleared his throat.
“No, she’s right, pet,” Felicitisia said. “You were a fool to sign what you did. But then, you always were blinded by the desire for that which you cannot have. It’s made you a particularly useless soul-bound, has it not?”
“You saying I should’ve stayed with Rhogan, waiting for the order to kill you?” Shade glowered, loose stones scraping beneath the soles of his boots. He dropped his hold on Gisel
e’s wrist, reaching for his blade. “I can show you how useful I am,” he spat, and Gisele didn’t know if his words were aimed at her or her aunt.
Maybe he would show the both of them.
“Remember you said that,” Felicitisia threatened, Rhogan’s head dripping from the neck where she held it. Fat droplets pattered onto the ground.
“Aunt Tisia,” Gisele tried, desperate to deflect the coming fight, “what game are you playing with one of the six sovereigns of Hell? Are you trying to call a war onto our family?”
“No, I merely wish to prevail in the one your brothers already started. And, of course, to unseat your father in the process. When all is settled, you, Marcello, and I will be the remaining sovereigns of our bloodline. Already, I have dispatched Tantalus and become the Queen of Thirst. Yet your brother is neither King of Eden nor Linger after more than a decade of toiling.”
With a flourish of Felicitisia’s blood-gloved palm, Shade’s contract rustled into existence in the air. “You’ve forgotten who your family is. And who we once were. We are the founders of Hell, Giseraphel. When we war, it cannot be contained to a single Gate. I was mistaken to have drawn you from the safety of the surface too soon. You’ve much to learn, darling, and more to remember. And so you will return until you’ve regained your senses.” She flicked her gaze to her battered son. “It’s time, love.”
Marcel limped forward. He offered Gisele a regretful, split-lipped smile as he plucked the Mardoll from a back pocket.
Shade bolted upright, wings snapping wide. “No, I’m going with her. My contract’s not done.”
They were sending her home? Gisele rose as well, knees protesting, jeans tacky. She tried to peer around Shade’s wings, but he was fluttering them, even the torn one, blocking her behind him—shielding her from view.
“Shade,” she breathed, touching his sweat-glistened back. “If your contract’s fulfilled, you’ll be free to come with me.”
